I'm a Half Empty Guy

Do You Spin Clockwise or Counter Clockwise?

I was having dinner with my wife and some friends, and we were talking about one of the two topics everyone is sick of: AI. (The other being politics.)

My tablemates were straining to convince me that, though there may be disruption to the creative fields, we still can’t see the possibilities that may arise. I’m open to the idea that things can work out in ways I can’t imagine, but only in theory. In practice, I worry, bemoan, and catastrophize. When my companions tired of trying to convince me, my wife, Noriko, said, “It’s OK, you’re a half empty guy.”

Our friends were delighted by this designation. I will henceforth be known as half-empty guy to these people, and I can already see the phrase being deployed to diminish my future doomsaying. In case you haven’t figured it out, she was referring to the idiom that some people see a glass as being half empty, and others see it as being half full. I, according to her, am a half-empty guy.

She is correct.

I was in an office last week doing office things when I took the video above. What do you see in it? I saw a metaphor for modern life: So much of our time is spent on meaningless tasks, spinning endlessly in obscurity. Is that what we’re here for? What would be the half-full point of view? We live in a world where hidden whimsy always delights if we look for it? Perhaps this is true. I was delighted by my discovery, and I felt a kinship with whoever placed that balloon there. The architectural accident that results in an infinite loop of latex and air is a tiny victory in a daylong battle against futility.

“You’re a half-empty guy.” A native speaker of English might say, “You’re a half-empty glass type of guy.” But Noriko’s elegant precision widens the phrase from the specific to the existential. It’s not just that my point of view has a predilection for paucity, it’s my vessel itself that’s lacking. I am half-empty.

I was riding my bike the other day and found myself in a swarm of delivery guys on e-bikes, waiting at a light. We were a group from all over the world. And I, as a Michigander, was probably the most American among us, though who knows? Guys exchanged words in Spanish, and languages I’d never heard. I asked a guy from Senegal how to say hello. He taught me. I said it a few times as we passed each other on Second Avenue. I forgot the phrase, but his smile stays with me.

I called my father for our weekly chat. He asked, “Do you see immigrants in New York? Aren’t you worried that they’ll shoot you or stab you?”

“No,” I replied. “But I am grateful that they deliver things to me, though I wish they’d slow down on their bikes sometimes.”

“They’re pouring over the border!” He was upset. He feels surrounded in Eau Claire, Wisconsin by the immigrants in New York.

He’s a half-empty guy.